June 11, 2007, Herald Journal

Iranians need US to look impotent

By ROZ KOHLS

“What if Iran took hostages and no one noticed?”

That’s what Michael Ledeen asked May 31 in National Review.

Not only did the Iranians predict correctly that the United States would do nothing, the US news media also has been looking the other way, so as not to notice the five American hostages snatched in Iran.

The five American hostages are Robert A. Levinson, Haleh Esfandiari, Parnaz Azima, Ali Shakeri, and Kian Tajbakhsh. The two women, Esfandiari and Azima, were visiting their mothers in Iran at the time of their arrests.

The Iranians and their terrorist supporters in Iraq have been trying to capture Americans in Iraq for months. Whenever they tried, though, the Americans fought back.

These five were much easier. They were unarmed, and within Iranian borders, according to Ledeen.

He pointed out that when the American Embassy was overrun in 1979, the Khomeini proclaimed the Americans “can’t do a thing.” Today, the regime is trying to show the same thing. Not only did they capture Americans, but five British citizens since May 24.

Ledeen theorizes that the regime is hated by most Iranians and fears a popular uprising. Average Iranians want to believe that America will help them get rid of the despised mullahs, who rule Iran.

If the mullahs show the Iranians that America is impotent and Great Britain is powerless, the ordinary Iranians will give up hope, Ledeen said.

So far, the mullahs’ plan is working perfectly.

“Instead of vigorously defending the Americans outrageously arrested and incarcerated in Iran, we opened a new round of negotiations with their captors, and the killers of our troops in Iraq, on Memorial Day.” Ledeen said.

The regime already made the 15 British sailors it captured March 23 in the Shat al-Arab waterway look like wienies. The sailors didn’t fight back when their boat was boarded, and the sailors caved in to their captors during questioning at the first opportunity.

The US and Great Britain are playing the exact role the mullahs want us to play, “The Timid Soul’s,” Casper Milquetoast.